»Celebrating the city with locos Nostalgia
TEN railway locomotives have proudly borne the word Gloucester on their nameplates. The first, named simply Gloucester, was introduced by the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway Company in 1840. Built in Philadelphia, USA, the engine proved an unhappy choice and was sold to the Taff Valley Railway in 1845, then scrapped 13 years later.
The GWR’S Gloucester saw service for seven years from 1866. Then a loco of the same name, number 2083, took to the GWR’S broad gauge tracks in 1876. It was scrapped in 1891.
The City of Gloucester was built in Swindon, followed by an engine of the same name built for the GWR in 1912.
Duchess of Gloucester was a super streamlined loco (similar to the famous Mallard), which entered service for the London Midland and Scottish Railway in 1937. It survived until the 1960s before falling victim to the scrapper’s oxy-acetylene cutter.
The Swindon built County of Gloucester, made in 1947, was withdrawn in 1962. Gloucester Castle was also built in 1947, a Brunswick 4-6-0 engine that ran on Western Region lines until 1958 and at various times made its home in the sheds off Horton Road.
The Gloucestershire Regiment 28th 61st had previously carried the name St Donat’s Castle, but was renamed in honour of the local regiment’s illustrious record in the Korean war.
Number ten in the roll of honour is The Gloucestershire Regiment, a 47/ 7 class loco and the first diesel to bear the city’s name.
If you travel by train today from Gloucester to Swindon you’ll stop along the way at Stroud, Stonehouse and Kemble. But until Monday November 2, 1964, when Dr Beeching’s axe fell on the railway system, the local train stopped many more times en route.
The additional stations and halts included Ebley Crossing, Cashes Green, Downfield Crossing, Bowbridge Crossing, Ham Mill, Brimscombe Bridge, Brimscombe, St Mary’s Crossing, Chalford, Oaksey, Minety and Ashton Keynes and Purton before Swindon was finally reached.
A bizarre railway accident happened on September 28, 1935 when the driver of a late evening train into Gloucester unhitched his engine from its carriages and left the steaming leviathan in a siding near the GWR sheds. Unfortunately, he forgot to put the brakes on.
As the driver jumped down from his cab to make his way home, the live loco began slowly to roll. It gathered momentum and by the time they reached the buffers at the end of the line, the hundred or more tons of mobile iron were unstoppable. Bursting through the buffers the engine ate up a distance of open ground, then ripped through a line of railings.
Over the pavement it continued, on across Horton Road, its wheels slicing deep furrows in the surface, to crash through a brick wall. The runaway train was eventually brought to a halt when it became embedded in the side of the Home of Hope. 18 girls were asleep in this institution for children in care and fortunately not one was injured.
If you are a fan of the comedies made by Ealing Films in the 1940s and ‘50s, you will no doubt recall The Titfield
Thunderbolt. Made in 1952, the movie starred Sid James, Stanley Holloway and a host of British character actors of the time.
But the real star of the show was a tall funnelled steam engine, number 1401 - The Titfield Thunderbolt.
For most of its working life the 0-4-2T loco puffed the line between Gloucester and Monmouth pulling a pair of passenger coaches for its living.
When at rest, 1401 lived in the Horton Road engine sheds. Like all locomotives that shared this accommodation, Gloucester’s famous film star carried the 85B shed plate.